Citizen and Participatory News as a Generative System

This week in our Contemporary Media Issues class we have been reading a book called The Future of Internet—And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain. The first two-thirds of the book talk a great deal about generativity, what Zittrain defines as “a system’s capacity to produce unanticipated change through unfiltered contributions from broad and varied audiences.”

I think citizen and participatory news is a great example of the generative system that Zittrain suggests. Outlets such as iReport and Wikinews allow for change in news through contributions that aren’t supervised or edited, and come from people all over the world. We started out in a system where there was news on the t.v. thanks to video cameras and audio equipment. Then came the Internet. Now there’s citizens out there producing news and distributing it through the Internet, where one’s content can be accessed by billions.

So what’s next?